When we did a huge Group Buy on CZ wheels for the Blackbird community several years ago, we had some rather horrendous bearing issues, spacer tolerance issues, and 2 instances of complete cush drive failure on the CZ wheels. Bearings were the cheapest Chinese POS bearings on the planet. All of this was circa 2005-2006 time frame.
Matsu (owner at the time, perhaps he is still there) had such poor English skills, this contributed to the problem in a serious way. We could not convince him to that the soft aluminum spacer he was using was simply not up to the job. Torquing the rear axle bolt to spec resulted in spacers they were all chewed up. When we told Matsu about this, his reply was "you only torque half-spec here".
???
Um...... shyeah, Matsu, that sounds like a good idea, let's torque the rear axle of a powerful hyperbike only half of what it should be....
Since Greg indicates CZ is under new management, hopefully things have turned around. And, to be honest, the WHEELS themselves were God-like works of art... it was the non-wheel parts of the system - bearings and spacers, primarily - that turned the whole thing upside down. The vendor of the Group Buy lost his ass on the deal, but did the right thing by Group Buy players and stepped up to "fix" Matsu's f*ck-ups.
Still and all, the wheels are, in fact, absolutely gorgeous. After I fixed my right spacer problem on the rear CZ wheel for my '05 R1, I admit I loved the CZ wheels... still wish I had this R1......
